Description:
About the Position: The Senior Staff Attorney - Strategic Initiatives is a senior legal rolewithin EBSC. This position will help lead efforts that allow EBSC to respond quickly to emerging legal needs, including developing EBSC's institutional response alongside the Co-Directors and other members of our legal team; coordinating with partners; providing training, guidance and supervision to other attorneys and paralegals around newer areas of our work (e.g. around representation of people in detention, habeas petitions, writs, etc.) and actively supporting the strategic growth and long-term vision of EBSC's Immigration Legal Services (ILS) program. The ILS program provides a range of direct legal services to over 2,000 immigrants a year in the Bay Area and its asylum program has a very high success rate. We work collaboratively and believe in a balanced caseload to ensure work-life balance. The Senior Staff Attorney reports to the Director of Immigration Legal Services for day-to-day operational matters and is accountable to the Co-Directors on matters of strategic direction.
Primary Responsibilities:
Support & Liaison for Legal Clinics
In response to increasing attacks on immigrant communities under the Trump administration, EBSC has initiated neighborhood legal and social clinics in collaboration with partners. Clinics are currently occurring several times a month.
- Help organize the rotation schedule for legal clinics in collaboration with Removal Defense Team, attending regularly and ensuring they are appropriately staffed.
- Oversee follow-up on referrals and reporting.
- Onboard potential clients to EBSC and coordinate with other legal staff as needed.
- Assist with training and overseeing law students and pro bono attorneys.
- Train and guide EBSC attorneys, DOJ reps and paralegals as needed on emerging legal areas (e.g. detention and removal defense, Habeas, Writs, etc.)
- Provide technical assistance to EBSC legal staff through regular trainings, office hours, and monthly meetings.
- Work with staff from other non-profits and coalitions with which EBSC collaborates, including other immigration legal services providers, community organizations, and mental healthcare providers.
- Represent individual clients in a range of immigration cases with a focus on affirmative asylum and removal defense, and can also include residency, naturalization, and other immigration petitions before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration
- Court and probate and family courts (for special immigrant juvenile status).
- Work collaboratively as part of EBSC's team and communicate regularly with other staff.
- Actively support the strategic direction and long-term vision of EBSC's ILS team as set
- by ILS Director and Co-Directors; identify gaps in legal coverage and bring strategic
- recommendations to the ILS Director and Co-Directors.
- Supervise other avenues of legal advocacy for existing clients (Congressional
- intervention, habeas, writs, or litigation strategies).
- Support with grant proposals, data collection and reporting as needed.
- Communicate with partners and media as requested.
- Other Duties As Assigned
Position Qualifications:
- J.D. licensed to practice law in the United States, or recently took the bar exam;
- 5+ years' experience providing immigration legal services;
- Demonstrated experience with humanitarian forms of relief and removal defense;
- Strong commitment to promoting immigrant and human rights;
- Experience working with clients from diverse cultural backgrounds and with low-income
- and/or traumatized individuals;
- Demonstrated ability to manage a large caseload;
- Competence in working as part of a team as well as independently;
- Excellent written and oral advocacy skills; and
- Spanish language fluency.
Supervision:
The Senior Staff Attorney will report to Kaveena Singh, Co-Executive Director | Director of Immigration Legal Services, along with other ILS Team Leads. This is a full-time position to begin immediately, based in the EBSC office at 2614 Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA, 94704. Flexibility to work from home is available, but this is not a remote position and the Senior Staff Attorney will be required to come to the office regularly.
